This resource remains available under SCIE’s commitment to share knowledge and information but please be alert to changes in policy or practice since publication. This resource was last updated in October 2006.

Learning, teaching and assessment of law in social work education

Innovation in learning, teaching and assessment of law in social work education: Introduction

In this section, a number of practical ideas will
be presented. They arise both from
good practice identified as part of the knowledge
review and from subsequent
analysis of the data. They are intended as seeds
to stimulate educators’ own
imagination and innovation in helping social work
students learn about the law.

The presentation will follow the same sequence
of five key questions that provided
the framework for presentation of the data in Section
1

The resources and ideas are intended to support
educators in developing content and
processes that take into account the findings of
the knowledge review on the key
dimensions of an effective curriculum, notably:

Dimensions of
the curriculum

Questions for consideration

Degree of infusion

To what degree is law learning
integrated with other subject learning?
To what degree is learning from practice an
integrated part of the overall curriculum and
how is law learning reinforced and assessed
in placement?

Developmental strategies

To what degree is learning
cumulative, building through ‘learning
to learn’ and ‘learning for practice’ towards
final learning goals, with time for consolidation
(Kearney, 2003)?

Alignment

To what degree does teaching and assessment
reflect the evidence that learning is enhanced
when students see tasks as relevant to their
future professional lives (Braye and Preston
Shoot et al, 2005)?

Application

To what degree does the curriculum enable
students to discuss their experiences of applying
the law in practice? How do they learn from
their experiences of negotiating conflicting
imperatives, practice dilemmas and organisational
demands?

Relevance and authenticity

How does the curriculum enable
social workers in training to
consider social work law practice from the
perspectives of experts by experience?

Criticality

To what extent does the curriculum enable
students to
engage in critical reflection on the legal
framework and its
application, as well as with technical knowledge?
How are
perspectives informed by ethics brought to
bear on the legal
framework and its application?

Interprofess-ionality

To what degree is law learning
informed by perspectives
from both social work and law, and
drawing widely on
knowledge from other disciplines?